by Ruskin Bond
For a moment she almost quailed. It was still light, but she could hardly see the huge barn although it was only fifty yards away. The air seemed to be a mass of tiny, white missiles flying towards her at the speed of an express train. They stung like needles on her eyes and nose, and she could feel them whipping past her legs. Mercifully she had put on her felt boots before going to Sunset. Her feet would have been frozen in leather ones.
She must hurry! If she let it get dark before she finished milking, she would never find the house on the way back.
The well was in a straight line between the house and the barn door, otherwise she would not have found it. She stumbled forward with her shoulders thrust in front and her head bent downward to protect her eyes from the stinging snow. Her breath came in painful gasps.
Her milk bucket knocked against the pump handle before she saw the well. She lifted the handle, and, pouring the warm water from her kettle down the pipe, pumped vigorously. Even above the wind she could hear the noise of the suction as her warm water primed the pump and drew the water upwards from the well.
She filled her milk bucket and the other bucket beside the pump. Then she lifted the handle again, and the trip action allowed the water to sink to the bottom of the well so that the pump could not freeze and burst. Her cows could only have one bucket each that night, for there was no time to go back to the house for another kettle.
With her kettle and the two buckets she staggered to the barn, buffeted by the storm and desperately afraid of spilling the water. She was gasping by the time she reached shelter. It was ecstasy to draw breath out of that wind.
There was a drift nearly three feet deep by the barn, where the snow had blown back in an eddy and come to rest in the calm. She ploughed her way through it, holding her buckets high, and the snow fell away from her boots. It was almost like going into an oven after the cold of the wind. The cows looked round from their stalls and lowed at her.
She set one bucket before the first cow, and, in spite of her urge for haste, held it while the animal drank. It would be sure to knock it over if left. Already, during the time she had walked twenty-five yards, a film of ice had formed on top of the water.
The cow sniffed and snorted and blew through its nose with exasperating deliberation before it would drink. She wanted to scream to make it hurry, but she forced herself to wait patiently. At last it thrust out an exploring tongue, and after splashing the water for a minute sucked the bucket dry without lifting its head.
When she took the bucket away the cow lowed for more. She spoke soothingly to it and watered the other cow. It drank with equally maddening deliberation, and then she ran to the pile of oat hay her husband had set in readiness for her. She placed several sheaves in the mangers, so that they should not go hungry in case she were late in the morning.
Next she took the heavy scoop shovel and prepared to clean out the gutters; but when she pushed it against the manure the handle jarred against her hands as though she had struck a granite rock. During the short time the storm had been raging the manure had frozen solid. It would take a pick-axe to move it now.
She gave, up the attempt, and placed forkfuls of bedding round the cows’ legs. They would need it all before the night was through. Already tiny icicles had formed on their nostrils. She could feel the wool of her blizzard-cap as solid as a board where her own breath had caught when she gasped in the wind. It rubbed against her lip irritatingly, and made her all the more conscious of the need to hurry. She snatched the milking-stool, and, tearing off her mittens, put them in her pocket, picked up the milk bucket and hurried to the first cow, but suddenly cried out with pain.
The metal of the handle had torn all the skin from the fingers of her left hand where they had grasped it. She cried with pain and vexation at her mistake. Fool that she was! As if she did not know enough to remember that any metal would tear off the skin in zero weather!
She carried the bucket on the crook of her arm and sat down beside the cow. It was good to thrust her head into its flank and feel the warmth coming from its body.
She could not wash the udder, as she usually did, or it would be covered with icicles. With her right hand she pulled away the scraps of bedding adhering to it, and then began to milk. The skin was torn from the fingers of her left hand just where she used them to squeeze the teats, and every movement hurt excruciatingly. When she lifted them for a moment to ease them, there was a smear of blood on the teat. She felt dizzy at the sight of it, but forced herself to begin again.
Gradually she absorbed some warmth from the cow’s body and felt the icy teats grow warmer under her fingers. The milk streamed into the bucket between her knees, and the homely, everyday sound of it was soothing. It encouraged her to tell herself that she would only have to do what she had to do every day when her husband was at home; but all her reasoning could not exorcise the terrors suggested by her subconscious mind. What she had to do was not the same as usual, for the simple reason that she was all alone and no one nearer to her than the Mawsons in the next house three miles away.
The sound of the milk streaming into her bucket was becoming drowned by the noise of the wind, and, though the front of her body and her hands were fairly warm, being close to the cow, her back was freezing where the draught from the door and windows struck her.
She shivered a little, and, having milked the rear teats dry, started on the front ones. With the change of position her skinned fingers hurt worse than ever, and the pain increased the tension of her nerves. It was beginning to grow dusk inside the barn. In spite of her injured fingers she milked furiously; for the idea that she must regain the house before it was dark was all the more terrifying because she knew it was justified and not a mere product of her fears. But the knowledge that it was justified made her still more highly strung.
At last! She had milked the cow dry. She gave a sigh of relief and crooked her arm under the handle of the bucket.
She could not bring herself to milk the other cow. It was going dry soon in any case. It would not hurt to be missed this once.
She pulled on her mittens, wincing as the wool pressed against her injured fingers, then unfastened the chains from the cows’ necks that they might lie down against each other when they had finished eating, and so keep warm.
Now to gain the house and her own cosy kitchen once more. There were the papers to read and the letters from her husband’s English relations, whom she would never see unless wheat was worth a great deal more than sixty cents a bushel for No.1 Northern.
She felt she could not wait another minute. The chickens had a self-feeding hopper and enough to eat till morning. In any case they would be huddled shivering on their perches. She had finished! Now for a roaring fire in the stove and the heater. She would sit close to the stove and eat her supper, and read her letters and the papers, and be so comfortable that she would forget the terror of being alone. Above all, she would be warm. She would be warm even if she had to sit on top of the stove.
With the kettle and the pail of milk she hurried to the door. Cold as it was in the barn, it was far colder outside. The noise of the wind, which had been muffled inside the building, made her gasp with fear at its fury. It was not so dark, though, as she had expected, and she gave a sigh of thankfulness for this, because the house was practically invisible through the whirling maelstrom of snow. All the usual landmarks were changed, and if she had been twenty minutes late she would never have found her way.
The first two feet of ground by the barn door were still bare, but the drift had formed again where the snow blew back in the eddy. It had re-formed into a bank exactly like a wave with the crest as sharp as a knife. There was not the slightest sign of her footmarks where she had walked twenty minutes earlier.
She ploughed her way homeward, the wind at her back. It almost lifted her off her feet, the bucket of milk tugged forward at her arm, and she could hear the unceasing rustle of the snow as it rushed past her legs like an incredibly swift river. She k
new she could never have walked a hundred yards against it.
It was unspeakable relief to feel her feet once more on the veranda steps. She had regained the house after all, and before her eyes floated a vision of a red-hot stove, with the kettle boiling and the teapot warming and a joint of pork sizzling in the oven. She would eat hot pork and drink boiling tea and heap the butter on her bread, and the fat would keep her warm—warm right through her shoulders and the back of her knees where the wind was cutting.
In the centre of the veranda steps the snow had drifted into a cone a foot high, but on both sides the boards were absolutely bare. Half of the veranda was still bare, but against the wall and the door there was a bank of snow. As she reached the door she glanced at the thermometer hanging on the wall. It showed twenty degrees below zero. From that she knew it would be forty below at six o’clock the next morning. Seventy-two degrees of frost! An idle fancy made her wonder how she could convey an idea of that cold to her husband’s relations in England. Seventy-two degrees above freezing meant a hundred and four in the shade, hotter than it ever was in London even on the hottest day of the hottest summer. Could they imagine a temperature the same number of degrees below freezing?
At this fancy she smiled for the first time since Mawson had left her, and swept her foot at the pile of snow by the door. It was sucked up past her face and out beyond the angle of the house as if it had been a cloud of smoke from a bonfire.
With thankfulness she heard the door slam behind her. She was home. In a few minutes the stove would be roaring and red-hot, and then she would be warm. Warm! At the thought of it her tautened nerves relaxed.
She set down her bucket and ran to the stove. It did not feel as warm as it should. She took the lifter and prised off the lid, and then uttered an exclamation of vexation.
She had been in such a hurry to put in the two sticks of wood before she milked that they had jammed together at the top of the fire-box and the embers had burnt themselves out without setting them alight.
It was a mere trifle such as frequently happened when you were in a hurry, but the momentary upset to her plans for a speedy supper banished her incipient cheerfulness. Somehow it seemed to her ill-omened, and made her feel nervous again. It was different when you were all alone in a blizzard. The ordinary things were not as easy to do as when someone else was there to keep you company.
The house shook to its foundations with each gust. She could feel the cold being blown through the walls into the room as though it were something alive and menacing. The cold had taken all the moisture with which the steam from her kettles had filled the air earlier in the day, and frozen it on the inside of the windows. They were covered with an opaque thickness of ice in a formation almost like the scales of a fish.
It was nearly dark, but she was so cold that she could not wait to light the lamp. She took the two pieces of wood out of the firebox, and, snatching a newspaper from a chair, laid her fire anew. She used plenty of kindling, for she had to have the fire in a hurry.
At last it was ready! She pulled off her mittens, hurting her skinned fingers, took the box of matches from the dresser and struck one of them. Soon she would be warm and be able to attend to her hand. She shivered nervously when she found that the match had no head.
It was a second portent of ill-omen. She glanced round the darkening room with a little quiver of fear. Everything seemed vaguely hostile in that bitter cold, and the very familiarity of the room only served to emphasise her loneliness.
There was only one more match in the box. Her hands were so numb with the cold that she could scarcely hold it, and her injured fingers were a torture. She trembled, partly from nervousness and partly from cold, as she struck it.
Just as it flared into light there was a tremendous gust of wind, which blew into the room through the crack under the door and through the very walls, where the boards had contracted from the dryness of the cold. She was afraid that the draught would put out the flame, and as soon as the edge of the paper had caught alight she slammed the door of the firebox with her elbow. She was taking good care not to touch any more metal with her fingers.
She had no fear that the fire would not go this time. Canadian stoves are far superior to an English range, and there is never any difficulty in getting the fire to go if you lay it properly, especially in zero weather. She thought no more about it, and hurried to the dresser to put some cold cream on her fingers. They were hurting so much that she felt it wiser to dress them before lighting the lamp.
The cream eased the pain a little, and she went back to the stove to see how the fire was going. Strange. There was not the roar from the stove pipe that there should have been in such a weather. Once more she felt a quiver of fear. It was positively eerie the way everything was going wrong. If only her husband had been there to chaff her for taking such a long time! At the thought of it she felt sick with loneliness.
She put on her right mitten and opened the fire-box. As she had feared, the fire had not caught. It must be bewitched, she thought, for she had laid it properly and the wood was dry enough in all conscience. There was not a vestige of moisture within hundreds of miles in that blizzard. It must be another portent of ill-omen, and in her tension she felt that the fates must indeed be against her.
She took out the sticks of wood and the kindling, and straightaway understood. The paper itself had not burnt. She held it up to the remnants of the daylight, and once more uttered an exclamation of anger. It was just possible to make out the heading, ‘The Sunday Times’.
The paper which her husband’s English relations sent to them every week. A good solid paper, she knew, but not the least bit of use for lighting the fire. No English papers seemed to be much good for that purpose, and from past experience she knew that the Sunday Times was easily the worst of the lot.
She bit her lip with vexation. It really did seem as if the fates were against her, or was it just because she was alone? Again she glanced fearfully round the room. It was horrible to be alone like that. Why on earth had she not taken a bit more care and used a Canadian paper? There were the Winnipeg Free Press and the Family Herald on the table. If only she had used them, she would have been warm by this time.
She flung the offending Sunday Times into the wood box, stuffed some pages of the Family Herald into the stove and once more set her fire. Now for another box of matches and then at last she would be warm.
But her groping fingers found no matches on their accustomed shelf. Growing more nervously excited every minute, she moved her hand over every inch of that shelf. Then over the one below it. And then over the one above it. She was gasping a little now; for though her fingers encountered cups and plates, bottles of essences and tins of salt and pepper, and all the other appliances of the kitchen, they did not close round the familiar box of matches.
She gave a little cry of alarm, for it did seem as if the place were bewitched and that something dreadful was going to happen to her. It was horrible to be so alone. Just when she thought she was going to have hysterics, she suddenly remembered, and laughed aloud from sheer relief.
Of course! What an idiot she was! It was simply absurd the way your nerves played tricks with you when you were alone.
Her husband had taken the other three boxes with him for his stay in the shack. She sighed with relief when she remembered how they had laughed over it that very morning when he put them in his pocket just before he left. How he had said it was a good thing she did not smoke, or else he could only have taken two boxes with him, and that she must not forget to buy a packet in Sunset that afternoon.
Of course, everything had a rational explanation if you did not get rattled and start thinking the house was bewitched just because you were alone. And she had bought a packet of matches in Sunset. You did not forget things like that when you only went shopping once in a blue moon and if there was enough butter made to trade with the store. She laughed once more as she stepped to the table where the box of groceries was lying. All
she had to do was to open the packet, take out a box of matches, strike one and then all would be well. The stove would get red-hot, and the whole house would be warm, and she could laugh at the blizzard raging outside.
But when her hands rummaged among the paper parcels in the box, they did not feel a packet of matches. Thinking it must be because of her mittens, she took them off. She shivered as her bare fingers touched the snow between the parcels. She felt every one deliberately, expecting each time she touched one to find it was the packet she wanted.
Her heart thumped with excitement and fear when she came to the end of the box and still she had not found the packet. The house must be bewitched after all, or else she would have found it by this time. For a moment she stood in irresolution, and then, sobbing with anxiety, she turned the box upside down on the table and blew the snow away from the parcels.
It was dark and she could only see a blurred outline where they rested. She wanted to snatch at them in her search, but she knew she must be calm or she really would have hysterics. The loneliness was more terrifying than ever now, and the blizzard seemed to be threatening to carry away the whole house. She bit her lip and forced herself to stand still until she had got her nerves under control once more.
After a minute’s wait she sat on a chair, put the box in her lap and methodically picked up each parcel one by one from the table and laid it in the box. Her heart began to thump again as she was nearing the end, and still she could not find that packet. At last there were no more parcels on the table, and the matches were not there!
At first she could not believe it, and moved her arms backwards and forwards over the table in ever wider sweeps, until finally she knocked two plates on the far side on to the floor. Then she was forced to believe. She was alone and she had no matches. It was dark and she would not get warm now.
It must have been the packet of matches the wind had blown away when she said good-bye to Mawson. Why, oh why, had she not stopped to look? They were past finding now. Why had she not taken more care when she set the fire? Why had she not lit the lamp first? Why...?